When the actors of Alice In Wonderland sat down to talk with The Citizen, it was the day after the United States election.
A numbness dulled the senses of this neighbouring nation.
A pall was cast.
In this country where multiculturalism is the primary hallmark of culture, where ethnic and religious pluralism were beloved pillars of the Canadian identity, Donald Trump's victory seemed to be a violent stab at the values this country holds most dear. It was the best day to see a dark brown man named Azeem in thick heels and an opulent dress portraying the villainous Queen of Hearts in this new production of Alice being created at Theatre North West.
If you're familiar with the common images from the history of Alice In Wonderland, Azeem Nathoo is everything unexpected. The Disney cartoon version provided a caricature of Queen Victoria. The Tim Burton feature film gave us an absurdly bulbous fashionista figure. Ever After High's animated version of the character is a pallid courtier evocative of Marie Antoinette or Alix of Hesse. Even the ones on playing cards are as white as eiderdown.
The ball bounces off that particular kilter when a man assumes the crown. The oddity of it is well in hand, though, with Nathoo on the Wonderland throne.
Nathoo has been a leader in on-stage gender tilting before, notably in the LGBTQ-influenced version of Two Gentlemen of Verona, as done by Melmoth Theatre in London where he had the co-lead as Sir Valentine.
He learned from the heights of the dramatic arts. He was a student at the internationally acclaimed London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and when he moved to Canada he landed in the thick of North America's stagecraft at the Stratford Festival. Among the highlights there was (coincidentally in the same cast as Prince George's Alana Hawley) a production of Caesar & Cleopatra starring Christopher Plummer and Nikki James in the titular roles.
He was also cast in multiple roles in Richard III for Metachrome Theatre in Montreal, a company dedicated to turning ethnic profiling on its ear. At the same time, he was working on the Komagata Maru Project with Theatre WhyNot, creating theatre around one of Canada's most infamous moments of national prejudice.
For the Queen of Hearts, if you can pardon the paradoxical pun, Nathoo is playing it straight.
"Although I am clearly a man, and I'm dressed in this costume, we are not presenting this character as a drag queen at all. We are trying to have her be a woman," he said.
"I have always felt we each have feminine and masculine traits, it is just a matter of degree. I get to explore that a lot with this portrayal."
He said the concept of a man in the role of this character had never occurred to him until Theatre North West posed the question. He was running the lines but hadn't fully sunk into the water of it until the costume elements were given to him.
"I started from a neutral palette as much as I could, and things became more nuanced for me once I got the shoes," he explained. "Getting into heels helped with the body language, and then laying in the Queen's English. Those added the levels of characterization. Then it was me trying to feed off of the other actors. This is a very generous ensemble, and I get a lot from reacting to how they react to me. Those responses inform each other."
It isn't a stretch for him to slather his diction in a royal accent. Nathoo truly is a man of the world, having been born in Calgary, raised in Kenya, then six years in the United Kingdon for theatre school, followed by a move back to Canada where he has resided in Toronto and Montreal.
Coming to Prince George, what with its royal name, has been a revelation to him. This city's theatrical chops are well known in the rest of Canada, and he now gets his first opportunity to see how a city this surrounded by wilderness and distance from other cities can make such powerful drama. He encouraged audiences to come see Alice In Wonderland if not the performances then the sets the technicians have designed for this production.
"They really are wizards," he said. "Working here, in this, is really a privilege. It's a gift to be in this particular production because of the ethnic diversity, the gender re-imagining, all the fresh new interpretations of a story we all thought we knew."
The spectre of Donald Trump will be there, too, in each show. Nazoo said "the Queen really is a Trump figure, and all I can say about how all of this is going down in the States is, look at the way Alice In Wonderland plays out. There is hope, there, in the end."
